


Regrets

by SeiShonagon



Series: Support [7]
Category: Constantine (TV), Hellblazer & Related Fandoms
Genre: Abuse, Aftermath of Violence, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, BDSM Scene, Bad BDSM Practice, Depression, Drugs, Dubious Consent, Episode Tag: s1e04 "A Feast of Friends", Extremely Dubious Consent, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Ravenscar, Self-Destruction, Self-Destructive Behavior, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Threats, Threats of Violence, Unsafe BDSM, Unsafe Sex, sex as self-harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 05:18:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3516836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeiShonagon/pseuds/SeiShonagon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John tries to destroy himself and his relationship with Chas after "Feast of Friends," by getting a random stranger to hurt him. Please, please, please heed these warnings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Regrets

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Everything, and Nothing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3279140) by [SeiShonagon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeiShonagon/pseuds/SeiShonagon). 



> Part 2 guest-written by a friend.

Part 1: Zed

Zed throws the last of her clothes into her bag, and winces at another agonized cry from the downstairs bedroom. She knows she shouldn’t leave like this, especially not without telling John where she’s going or when she’ll be back, but she _needs_ to get away from this, from him, to clear her head and make sense of what she’s seen over the last few days.

If there is any sense to be made of it, which she doubts, regardless of John’s assurances. She knows Gary’s choice was courageous, and she knows that there are people alive today who wouldn’t be if not for the two of them – and even more who will be alive a month, a year from now, who wouldn’t be if they hadn’t made that difficult choice. But after seeing the patterns carved into Gary’s face by the hand of someone he trusted, someone he loved, after John made the choice long before Gary could – she’s not stupid, she _knows_ how this has to have played out – Zed finds it really difficult to care.

She can’t even respect John’s choice to stay and hold Gary’s hand through the last of it. It’s the right thing to do, but it doesn’t erase what went before, and she can’t stand to be around the air of self-justification a moment longer.

She especially doesn’t want to be around when that air dissipates.

She closes her sketchbooks and pencil cases, adds them to the pack, and shoulders it. She glances around to make sure she has all of her belongings, and braces for the noise that will come when she opens the door to the bedroom she’s been using on the nights she stays at the mill house. Even through a floor’s height and two closed doors, she hasn’t been able to escape the sound of Gary’s dying pain, but it’s been quieter. She’ll have to venture forth from her meager refuge if she wants to leave the house, and she supposes it’s worth it.

At least she won’t have to worry about John hearing her footsteps and coming to investigate. He won’t hear her over Gary’s screaming, and Zed knows nothing short of the end of the world would draw him from that room until it’s over. She’ll give him that much credit, at least. Give the devil his due, she thinks sardonically.

She covers her ears and moves as quickly as she can to the truck. Sitting in the driver’s seat, she breathes in the silence, and considers, just for a moment, waiting there, to make sure she’s there when it ends, to help pick up the pieces. Then her sense of self-preservation slams into her, and she puts the truck in gear, turns it around as sharply as it will go, and departs in a shower of gravel.

She takes a meandering route back to her apartment. As long as she’s still en route, she doesn’t have to feel quite so much like she’s cut and run from a situation she’s going to have to learn to handle one of these days. But eventually, she stops for takeout and brings the food back to her loft, where she revels in the solitude and quiet. She listens to music, over bad Chinese food and worse beer.

It’s after only a small amount of alcohol that Zed begins to feel a familiar restlessness in her fingers and the slight headache that she knows from experience won’t go away until she draws whatever is pushing at the inside of her head. She resists it as long as she can, not wanting to see what’s happening in the mill house, knowing that’s probably what her charcoal will produce. It’s only when the headache grows to near-migraine levels that she throws out a Spanish curse and reaches for her art supplies. At least she’s progressed to a point where she can practically draw John and his activities on instinct, without paying particular attention to the content.

It isn’t the first time she’s drawn him without clothes. That was several months back, one of the first times she’d ever drawn him, and it was the sketch that had convinced her this mystery man on the page was a real person. He stood, hunched in fear and shame, in some kind of communal shower, with waist-high stalls that offered only a modicum of privacy and with shower heads lowered for safety. She’d never seen anything quite like it before, but immediately developed theories. Subsequent images of John in restraints, or surrounded by guards and doctors, bore those out, and made her wonder if the man in her pictures was spending time in prison for some reason. Zed was resolved to ask John about that time, when their lives had calmed down some.

It would take far more than curiosity to make her ask about the other nude image, for all it’s one of the most beautiful pictures she’s ever produced. She had blushed when she realized what was happening, and that she had just drawn a real man, strapped securely to a bedframe, eyes closed in bliss and head thrown back in joyful surrender, as he gave himself over to the apparently quite skilled hands and tools of a leather-clad woman Zed still didn’t recognize.

For all the sexual content, the current image bears much more in common with the first picture than the second, Zed realizes when just enough of the picture has emerged to be recognizable. Apparently Gary has passed away, and John has left the mill house – that bed doesn’t exist anywhere she has ever seen. She also doesn’t recognize the other man in the photo, bent over John and gripping him by his hair, eyes blown wide with what is almost certainly some drug as well as with lust. John himself is weeping, his face a mask of distress and horror, his arms bound behind him, his body wrapped in dark welts.

Zed drops the charcoal. She refuses to finish this – not when she can possibly do something about it. She fumbles through her purse for her phone, and quickly scrolls through the few numbers she keeps in her contacts. She calls John first, to see if she can possibly prevent the events of her drawing altogether, if they haven’t happened yet, and feels her heart clench at the sound of his voice mail.

She doesn’t bother leaving a message; it would just waste valuable time. She hangs up and reaches for her jacket. Then she pauses – she is not the right person to handle this. She doesn’t know John well enough to know the nature of the situation she is wandering into, and she isn’t stable enough herself at the moment to handle whatever might be going on.

Besides, she admits to herself, she isn’t sure she can face John now. Not after yelling the horrible things at him that poured out of her in the heat of the moment, after abandoning her post in a moment of cowardice. But this is one of those times when she would need a mentor, and hers is clearly out of commission.

She swears again, this time for missing the obvious solution for precious seconds, and calls Chas. This time she does leave a voice mail. “Chas, something went wrong. A lot of things went wrong. I went back to my apartment. John’s in trouble. Come home. Please.”

Zed hangs up the phone, throws her sketchbook across the room, and finally, finally lets herself cry for all of them, until she falls deeply asleep.

Part 2: John

_He watches me take my clothes off while he gets high. Smoking, not the needle, though I can see from the track marks that's his usual fix._

_Doesn't offer me any. Probably for the best. Where my head is at, I would've said yes, bloody hypocrite that I am. When Gaz drowns himself in heroin, he's pathetic, but there hasn't been a day since Ravenscar that I haven't been drunk, and somehow I still managed to make him feel like the loser._

_With enough meth, this bloke could shag me for days, but I'm so drunk I don't know that I can even get it up. And that's fine with me._

_That isn't the point of this._

_So what is the point of this, then? Pick up a broken stranger and let him use me until I hurt on the outside as much as I hurt on the inside? No, it's more than that. Once it hurts enough, you get beyond pain. And then you're floating._

_Fuck me 'till it hurts so much it doesn't hurt at all. Don't tell me your name, don't stop even if I beg you to, even if I pass out. You're just using me, and I'm just using you, and even if I don't say any of it out loud, as he stands up, and gives me a crooked grin that reminds me too much of Gaz, I can tell he knows what I want._

_Knew he was just the right kind of bloke to make me suffer from the moment we first met. Within half an hour of picking him up at a scummy little dive bar I was sucking him off in his car, ‘cos panicked flashbacks of teenage sexual trauma really did seem like the best way to push away the guilt over what I was doing to Chas. Cheating, like I always do, in the end._

_Guess Chas should've known better than to trust a nasty piece of work like me, eh?_

_But I don't wanna think about Chas right now, so I drop to my knees and start sucking the bloke off. He slams into me, and I struggle not to gag as he fills my mouth, and then my throat, so deep I can't breath. He takes off his shirt while he fucks my mouth, then separates while he takes off his trousers._

_"Stand up and turn around," he says, and I do._

_I feel the satin of my tie as he starts binding my hands behind my back, bent at the elbow just past the verge of discomfort. "Make it nice and tight," I say softly._

_"What's your safeword?" he asks as he finishes the knot. The satin cuts into my injured hand, the hand Gary had gripped so tightly._

_"I don't want one," I reply, and then he pushes me to the filthy mattress on the floor of his grubby little one-room flat._

_His hands roam all over me, foreign things. This stranger's touch reaches everywhere, fondling me as I already start to feel that growing distance from reality. His rough, dry fingers make me gasp as he pushes them inside of me, stretching me. Then he pulls away, and I'm left alone, dizzy from the whisky so that the bed seems to spin._

_I whimper the first time he strikes me with the belt. Doesn't start off slow, just gets right into it. Stripes of fire all across my body, wild and careless blows that randomly hit my back and legs and arse, and isn't it all just so bloody familiar. I'm cowering, trembling, and my body wants to escape, but when I crawl away he just hauls me back and hits me again._

_Every part of me wants this to end. It's all fear and racing pulse and throbbing pain and I open my mouth to beg him to stop, but instead all I say is "Harder!"_

_And he bloody does it. Keeps hitting me harder, so hard my body shakes with every blow. I'm gasping at the pain, and suddenly I'm weeping, leaving a stain of wet tears where my face is pressing on the mattress below me. The bastard just keeps hitting me._

_"Harder..." I sob, my voice cracking._

_As the beating gets worse, I start drifting. The pain recedes, everything recedes. I stop struggling and just take it._

_And it happens, like pushing past a barrier. Suddenly I'm on the other side of it._

_Yeah. Right there. Just let me float. Hurt me all you want, sunshine. I'm somewhere else._

_He flips me over and kisses me roughly, then smacks me a few times, and I can't tell the difference between one feeling and the other. It's all just far away. He pushes into me, and then he's fucking me. I'm just a hole to him, yeah? I get that. But I'm using him to take me somewhere else, where I barely feel a thing._

_Just let me stay here._

_It's just like I thought. He's got enough meth to make it last. Gets himself into a rhythm. He beats me, fucks me, comes inside of me, gets high, and does it all again. I get off only once, a quick burst of pleasure that's gone in an instant, dragging me back down into suffering when the orgasm is over._

_By this point, I'm limp, a pliant, broken thing. It’s all happening from a distance, I think I do pass out a bit, and at some point I'm not drunk anymore, it's not night anymore, and I'm not floating anywhere. I'm filthy, and loose, and my insides hurt, and my skin's on fire._

_"That's enough," I finally whimper when I can't take it anymore. "Just let me go... Please..."_

_He finishes first, of course, pounding my battered body and filling me one last time before finally pulling away. Cuts the tie with a knife and my arms fall beside me, swollen and numb._

_I can't look at him, not yet, so I stay where I am, face down on a mattress even filthier than when we started. It's agony as my arms wake up again, worse than I could have imagined. Every inch of me hurts, too, inside and out._

_The bloke lights up again, a joint this time, and I curl up on my side, hugging myself close. I can feel the dirty, slimy trickle of his come dripping out of me. I'm just begging to catch something really nasty, and I'm pretty sure I deserve it._

_The bastard didn't hold back, did he? My arms are crisscrossed with burns from being bound so long, so brutally, and the rest of me is covered not just with bruises, but with raised red welts and cuts from the belt. Every muscle aches, and I can't stop shaking._

_I look down at myself and know there'll be no hiding this. I'm crap at healing magic, always have been, and I was so far gone I didn't even have the sense to store the sacrifice for some future spell like I usually do._

_What was the point of this?_

_I hurt even worse than before. Gaz is still dead. Zed is still gone. And Chas? This is gonna break his heart._

_"You all right?" the bloke finally asks awkwardly._

_"Far from it, mate," I say, forcing myself to sit up, trying to stop the shakes, desperate to get out of here._

_"So, um... You need me to call you a cab or something?"_

_I start to laugh, wild, ragged, desperate laughter, and it all ends in tears. Like it always does._

 

Part 3: Chas

Chas drives the half-repaired cab back to Atlanta well above the speed limit and only barely within the limits of safety – it would be no help to John if he gets himself in an accident along the way, after all. Zed’s message was beyond worrying, and when he tried to call her back he was been unable to reach her. He was equally unable to reach John, which is his bigger concern. In the end he leaves multiple frantic messages for both of them, asking them to meet him at the mill house if possible, and heads there as quickly as possible.

The first signs to meet his eyes certainly aren’t positive: tire tracks from Zed’s truck indicating a hurried departure, but no return, and certainly no truck. Tracks from some other vehicle, but no vehicle, are visible, and so Chas proceeds with caution, shotgun prepared.

At first, he thinks the mill house is silent, which is ominous enough, but as he moves slowly forward, he hears hitched breathing below which only makes him worry more. He hurries quietly to the railing and looks down into the library, where he sees John, slumped on the floor in front of the leather armchair, wrapped in blankets but shirtless, hissing in pain as he applies antiseptic to something Chas can’t yet see.

Chas carefully stashes the shotgun in its proper place, then hurries down the stairs. “John? _John,_ ,” he calls urgently. “Are you—“ he stops short as John’s head comes up suddenly and Chas gets a better look at the situation.

John is wearing his pants, but no shoes or socks. His bare upper body is covered in bruises, and what appear to be lacerations of some kind are visible around his sides, seemingly extending across his back. His arms have burns of some kind around them from elbow to wrist, and his right hand is badly bruised as if someone has gripped it far too hard for far too long. There is blood in his hair and tears have tracked their way down his face from his bloodshot eyes.

He smells overwhelmingly of alcohol and sex.

His face is a picture of horrified guilt, and – what truly sparks anger in Chas – surprise, and chagrin at being caught out.

“John. What have you done.” Chas can hear the coldness in his own voice, and he doesn’t care.

John gives a small shrug, and winces as the movement pains him. “Nothing different from usual, mate. Shouldn’t be a surprise, by now.” His voice is completely devoid of tone.

“I’m going to ask you some questions, and I want answers. Is that clear.” It isn’t a question, and he doesn’t give John time to answer before proceeding to actually ask the first thing he needs to know. John might be an asshole, but it doesn’t mean Chas shouldn’t do the right thing, just in case this isn’t entirely what it looked like – “Do I need to call the police?”

John shakes his head. “Poor decision, not poor luck.”

Chas breathes out in relief.

Now, though, Chas can now get properly angry, and he begins to let himself go, asking questions, letting his tone become harsh. For the next few seconds, questions and answers fly quickly between them.

“How many, John?”

“Just one, mate.” John’s voice is quiet, shamed, accepting of the interrogation.

“Male or female?”

“Does it matter?”

“Male, then. Name?”

John pauses at that. “I don’t know.”

Chas feels a chill run through him. “You don’t know? Had you met him before?” At John’s headshake, he begins to feel slightly ill. “Did you use protection?”

John shakes his head, and shivers when Chas hisses in disapproval.

“Were you both drunk?”

“Just me. He was high, though. I think I remember seeing track marks.” Now the shame is thick in John’s voice, as the sheer stupidity of what he has done is laid bare between them.

Chas feels his hands curl into fists, in a combination of fear and anger. “Oh my _God_. John, Constantine, you utter _fucking idiot_. And you weren’t going to tell me any of this, were you, if I hadn’t come home early because _Zed called!_ ” Chas’ voice finally rises above conversational levels, and John drops his eyes but says nothing, trembling harder now. There is guilt clear in every line of his body, not just over the sex with some random stranger, but over the potential risk to Chas – and they don’t even know how that would interact with his semi-immortality, he’s never died of an illness before. Chas focuses on the here and now before _that_ gruesome topic can take root in his mind.

Chas crouches down, glaring straight into John’s face, and shouts furiously. “So this is how you’re gonna to destroy yourself? Give me one good reason, John, just one, why I shouldn’t have you shipped back to Ravenscar, and this time make sure you _stay there_!”

“I don’t have one,” John whispers, and something about the rasp in his voice makes Chas take another look at the man, because something has changed in just the last few seconds.

John has pressed himself back against the chair in a way that has to be painful on the bruises and cuts, his face turned away not in guilt but in anticipation of a physical blow. His hands make an almost fluttering motion that Chas recognizes as an aborted motion to shield himself, and his eyes dart to Chas and away with a blank resignation. Chas realizes John has made the conscious decision to accept whatever punishment Chas decides to dish out, without complaint or resistance.

John is genuinely afraid of him in this moment, Chas realizes with nausea coiling in his gut, and all at once he feels his rage evaporate.

He backs away and lowers his voice. “Not going to hurt you, John. Come here, let me see what you’ve done to yourself.”

John nods numbly, and separates himself from the armchair with a pained gasp. Chas kneels on the floor and takes the antiseptic and bag of cotton balls from where John abandoned them. He runs his eyes over John, running mental triage on the injuries he can see. “Turn around, I need to see your back.”

Chas keeps his orders clipped, impersonal, hoping to avoid spooking John any further, but he can’t stop the intake of breath when he sees the overlapping welts, many of them bloody at the edges, disappearing below the waist of John’s pants and clearly extending over his whole body. These were clearly delivered with deliberation, but without any sense of artistry or restraint. He thinks he spots one set with marks at one end from a buckle of some kind.

“He used a belt?” Chas can’t stop himself from asking softly. He regrets it immediately upon hearing the hitched breath that accompanies John’s nod. “Shh, it’s okay. Turn back around, I don’t have to do those just yet.” They are some of the worst injuries, it’s true, but nothing looks like a few minutes will make any more difference, and neither of them are ready for this just yet.

When John complies, Chas instead reaches for antiseptic and burn salve to treat the wounds around his arms. Upon close inspection, they look like friction burns, probably from cloth of some kind. He can still see an indentation where the knot dug into the skin as it burned, meaning it was there for some time.

When he begins with the salve, John tries to pull away from Chas’ gentle care.

“Stop struggling.” Chas’ voice brooks no disagreement, and John subsides, refusing to look at him, clearly accepting his assistance only because he’s been told he doesn’t have a choice. Chas keeps a gentle grip on his left wrist, the right hand being too injured for it, to make sure he doesn’t change his mind.

Chas wonders about that hand – it’s the only injury that seems noticeably worse on one side than the other. He may have to actually ask John about this one.

Once all treatments have been applied to John’s arms and face and torso, it’s time for the tougher part, Chas thinks, but this time John knows it’s coming and is already beginning to move.

“This will sting,” Chas warns him, pouring antiseptic onto the cotton wool and turning John away from him.

“Good,” John murmurs. Chas frowns. Clearly John went out seeking pain, and Chas honestly hopes that he found more than he bargained for. Because if this was what he wanted…

They will have to have a talk about this. To come to some kind of solution that doesn’t involve John destroying himself with random dangerous strangers, and doesn’t involve him using Chas and their relationship as just another instrument of suffering.

There are solutions, and they will find them, Chas thinks as he applies antiseptic to as many of the abrasions and lacerations as he can isolate, and they’ll have to be better than this.

He undresses John gently and slowly, watching him carefully for signs of panic. The wounds below his waist are worst of all, and John can’t quite suppress quiet sounds of pain as Chas cares for him as quickly and gently as possible. This is the worst he’s ever seen John put his body through voluntarily, but he tells himself he doesn’t have time to be upset about that now.

When he’s done, John is still filthy, but the actual wounds are as disinfected as they’re going to get.

“Almost done. Now upstairs with you for a shower. You need it.” This turns out to be easier said than done, as John’s balance proves insufficient to negotiate the stairs, and after half-carrying him up them, Chas determines that leaving him to shower by himself would be sheer irresponsibility.

John has clearly concluded the same, because he doesn’t even look for an explanation when Chas follows him into the full bathroom upstairs.

John noticeably avoids the sight of the bathroom mirror as Chas flicks the switch. Chas is horrified to see under the unforgiving brightness the full picture of what John has put himself through.

He knows John’s been through worse, at a younger age, and less willingly. Bile rises in his throat at the thought of any kid going through what John has, and at any parent who would raise their child to believe they deserved it. He would have killed anyone who dared inflict that kind of horror on his own child.

Chas doesn’t look away, though – he refuses to flinch from the damage to John’s body or John’s soul. No matter what tonight’s events mean for the two of them, this is something he is determined to do for his friend.

He contemplates briefly the problem of the shower. After their first sex, John had snapped at him with sudden fury when he’d approached the shower with him. Chas isn’t sure exactly what created this particular flash point, but he definitely needs to avoid it now.

John makes the decision for him, glancing at him with surprising sharpness as he enters the shower alone and closes the curtain. Chas waits in the bathroom, unwilling to take any further risks. 

When the water starts, Chas finally presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and takes a deep breath of his own. At some point he’ll have to make clear to John what this has done to him, seeing his friend this way.

Chas almost has himself under control when he hears the first sob. John is crying softly, just barely audible over the sound of the shower. Chas clearly isn’t meant to hear it, so he holds himself steady with an effort, just watching the silhouette of John’s body through the frosted curtain as he leans against the shower wall, motionless under the hot water.

Chas has to blink rapidly a few times to clear his eyes. John has an unfortunate habit of being perceptive at the worst possible times, and in his current state he’d only turn Chas’ distress into another source of guilt. He bears silent witness to John’s suffering, until the other man’s quiet weeping calms and he finishes cleaning himself.

When the water turns off and the curtain opens, Chas silently hands John the towel he requests, and helps him back out. Other than his newly reddened eyes, John actually looks considerably better now that he’s clean.

The final treatment Chas attempts is a cloth bandage to brace John’s injured right hand, and this John truly resists, pulling his hand away every time Chas reaches for it. “No. Leave that one. It’s from… something else, and I don’t want to forget it.” His voice shakes with grief.

Chas decides not to push, but it’s yet another thing they’ll have to talk about. “All right, but you _will_ take care of it and not use it more than necessary.”

He helps John into a soft t-shirt and sweatpants, and considers a moment where to go next. This next conversation should take place somewhere other than their bedrooms, as it needs to be as close to neutral ground as they can get in the millhouse, which is generally John’s territory. The sofa in the library is probably as good as they’ll get, so he gently leads John back there.

John looks like he’s about to face a firing squad.

Rather than flounder around the minefield of John’s mental health issues, Chas decides to find out from the source what’s going on. “How about you tell me what you think is about to happen,” he suggests.

John swallows hard. “Obviously, this is the end of us, mate. I fucked it up, like always. Told you I would, if you recall.”

Chas nods, and speaks evenly. “You certainly did tell me. And I do know who you are, John. Did you want this to be the end?”

John shakes his head, then looks away while he gets a grip on his emotions. “Not my choice, mate.”

“As much yours as mine. If you want it over, it’s over. If not, we have a conversation.”

Apparently he’s touched a nerve, because it’s as if a dam breaks and suddenly a torrent of words flows from him.

“What is it you want to hear? I’m sorry, all right? I fucked up, you deserve better. But if you’re looking for me to beg, you can forget it. Counting you, I’ve betrayed more than one friend in the last few days, as I’m sure Zed told you. And yeah, I know it’s more proof I’m a cold-hearted bastard, but I’m not going to say I could have done anything different about Gary. I had no choice, damn it!”

There are tears in John’s eyes again, and Chas wishes Zed _had_ told him something, because then he would know how to deal with this.

“I’m sorry, John, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. Zed just told me you were in trouble and something had gone wrong.” He tries to keep his voice soothing.

“Don’t fucking _handle_ me, Chas,” John fires back, but the heat is dissipating from his voice, and he’s once again left with grief and guilt. “Wrong,” he murmurs. “Yeah, you could say things went wrong. Not quite as wrong as they could have, but pretty fucking wrong.”

John clearly needs to have this out, so Chas lets him talk. He starts from the beginning, and Chas is near tears himself at the end – it’s been years since he saw Gary Lester, and they were never close, but even back then Gary was a sweet kid, if useless, and he knows what Gaz and John meant to each other, once.

He gives John a minute to get himself under control after, and when John looks up at him and says with tears still in his voice and his accent coming thick with the emotion, “Buried him yesterday. Me oldest mate, and I didn’t know it ‘till he came back. ‘S you, now. So you might want to get out while you can.”

“Not getting rid of me that way, John.”

“You don’t seem to get it,” John says, with a mix of exasperation and resignation. “Things like… this,” he gestures between them, “I don’t get to have this. This isn’t how things work for me. Isn’t part of my life.”

“And how’s that working out for you?” Chas asks calmly. When John just stares at him again, not having a response, he relents, knowing what John wants but can’t say right now, and decides he’ll let tomorrow happen tomorrow, and save the rest of the difficult conversation for when the wounds have at least scabbed over a little. “Come here, asshole,” he demands, and reaches for John.

Both men jump when the door to the mill house bangs open, and Zed appears in the doorway. “Chas!” she calls out. “I’m so sorry, my phone died, I saw you tried to—“ she falls silent when she sees the two of them.

There is a moment of awkward staring, then John grouses, “You have the worst bloody timing, love.” He won’t look at her, and his shoulders are hunched again; there is clearly another set of issues here to deal with.

“Zed, sorry, John and I have some things to talk about. We’ll do dinner later.”

He wonders why she blushes furiously, but she nods and vanishes down the hall.

Chas turns back to John. “Let’s try that again. I know what you want, and we’ll talk about it tomorrow. In the meantime, get over here.” And though he sits back on the sofa, leaving a spot for John to come lean against him and make himself comfortable, his tone is not one of invitation, but of command. John needs this right now.

So he comes closer, and curls against Chas’ side with an involuntary sigh of contentment. They sit in silence, and if occasionally the side of Chas’ shirt is dampened with tears when John becomes lost in thought, he doesn’t force the issue, just rubs John’s shoulders gently and cards his fingers through his hair until his breathing evens out.

Eventually, Chas feels John’s breathing change, and hears him begin to snore lightly. He leans his own head back on the sofa, unwilling to wake the other man from peaceful rest.

They never notice Zed coming into the room hours later to sit opposite them, smiling over the edge of her sketchbook after fixing herself dinner.


End file.
